donheff
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I have Internet through a Verizon FIOS G1100 gateway router to which I have added a DECO TP-Link S4 mesh network for wifi. I am confused about how this setup works as well as security implications. Verizon is not helpful and most of their technicians seem to know less about this stuff than I do. So, once again, I turn to ERdotOrg for insight since quite a few members seem to find techy weirdness interesting.
The Verizon router is in my basement. It's wifi was accessible throughout my house but sketchy in a couple of far corners. I have been streaming a few providers to various TVs and decided I need better wifi so I bought and installed the TP-Link mesh.
My VZ router gets its internet through the COAX. It has a WAN Ethernet port (as well as 4 LAN Ethernet ports) but VZ did not bring an Ethernet cable in from the ONT. When I setup the TP-Link it would not work when I connected it to one of the LAN ports as I would have expected to do. It only works when I connect it to the WAN port. Both the TP-Link and the FIOS router use 192.168.1.x as their LAN private Ip address range. I have the FIOS router wifi turned off and only use the TP link for my home network. I can see that the TP-Link has a routable 71.178.36.x IP address on the WAN side. I believe it is pulling down a separate WAN side IP address from FIOS but when I connect a laptop to a LAN port of the FIOS router I can't figure out what the router's WAN IP address is so I am not sure. In any event, since the TP-Link has a WAN address that is not in the 192.168 range it seems to me that it must be sitting out on the Verizon network on its own, not getting the benefits of any LAN side security features that may be built into the FIOS router.
Does this sound right? If so, does anyone know whether this is risky or does TP-Link provide a fairly secure connection?
Also, I am confused about the two LAN networks, both of which are 192.168. and neither of which can be changed (eg. to a 10.x private network) as far as I can determine. I can see that the FIOS router is able to contact the FIOS TV set top boxes thru the COAX on 192.168 addresses (that is where they get the guide, On Demand, etc). That was a little confusing to me since I had assumed that only WAN traffic would be over on the COAX side of the router but it must be able to handle both WAN and LAN over there. I am hopeful that the TP-Link is not passing any of it's LAN side 192.168 traffic back to the FIOS router's coax where it might collide with set top box traffic using the same 192.168 addresses but I don't know whether that is true. I restricted the range of the TP-Link LAN DHCP server so that it does not hand out addresses in the range that the set top boxes are currently assigned to just in case.
Any of you former network engineers doing anything similar with FIOS? Do you want to give me a crash course in what is going on?
The Verizon router is in my basement. It's wifi was accessible throughout my house but sketchy in a couple of far corners. I have been streaming a few providers to various TVs and decided I need better wifi so I bought and installed the TP-Link mesh.
My VZ router gets its internet through the COAX. It has a WAN Ethernet port (as well as 4 LAN Ethernet ports) but VZ did not bring an Ethernet cable in from the ONT. When I setup the TP-Link it would not work when I connected it to one of the LAN ports as I would have expected to do. It only works when I connect it to the WAN port. Both the TP-Link and the FIOS router use 192.168.1.x as their LAN private Ip address range. I have the FIOS router wifi turned off and only use the TP link for my home network. I can see that the TP-Link has a routable 71.178.36.x IP address on the WAN side. I believe it is pulling down a separate WAN side IP address from FIOS but when I connect a laptop to a LAN port of the FIOS router I can't figure out what the router's WAN IP address is so I am not sure. In any event, since the TP-Link has a WAN address that is not in the 192.168 range it seems to me that it must be sitting out on the Verizon network on its own, not getting the benefits of any LAN side security features that may be built into the FIOS router.
Does this sound right? If so, does anyone know whether this is risky or does TP-Link provide a fairly secure connection?
Also, I am confused about the two LAN networks, both of which are 192.168. and neither of which can be changed (eg. to a 10.x private network) as far as I can determine. I can see that the FIOS router is able to contact the FIOS TV set top boxes thru the COAX on 192.168 addresses (that is where they get the guide, On Demand, etc). That was a little confusing to me since I had assumed that only WAN traffic would be over on the COAX side of the router but it must be able to handle both WAN and LAN over there. I am hopeful that the TP-Link is not passing any of it's LAN side 192.168 traffic back to the FIOS router's coax where it might collide with set top box traffic using the same 192.168 addresses but I don't know whether that is true. I restricted the range of the TP-Link LAN DHCP server so that it does not hand out addresses in the range that the set top boxes are currently assigned to just in case.
Any of you former network engineers doing anything similar with FIOS? Do you want to give me a crash course in what is going on?